Clinics & Services

In addition to general medical consultations, we are pleased to be able to provide services covering the following specific areas:

Asthma

Chronic obstructive airways disease

Coronary heart disease

Diabetes

Cervical screening

Maternity services

Immunisations

Dressings

Blood tests

Smoking cessation

Steroid Joint Injections

Minor Surgical Procedures

Contraception - click on the tab above for further information

Our receptionists will be happy to advise you on the most appropriate member of the Practice team to see.

Non-NHS Services

Some services that we provide fall outside the scope of what the NHS funds, as they are not part of day-to-day General Medical Services. Such non-NHS services therefore attract private charges that are necessary to cover the costs of medical and administrative time that patients are not normally exposed to under the NHS.

Our reception staff will be happy to advise you about appointment availability and applicable charges.

Travel Services

Important Information - Introduction of Service Charge

From 1stJanuary 2016, we will be introducing a small service charge for provision of our Travel Services. This has become necessary in order to cover the increasing costs of offering a Travel Service that is not, in fact, part of the current NHS General Practice contract. With increasing amounts and complexity of international travel, comes a corresponding increase in the amounts of administration, training, consultation time, and professional fees, such as medical indemnity insurance, that are not being funded by the NHS.

From 1st January 2016, the following charges will therefore apply to any patients requesting Travel Services:

Adults: £20 per person, per trip

Children £10 per child (under the age of 16), per trip

Families £50 per family, per trip (2 adults and up to 3 children under the age of 16 yrs)

The service charges will cover the following:

A full Travel Health Assessment, as detailed on your Pre-Travel Questionnaire, by one of our qualified nurses.

Explanation and discussion of your options with regard to preventative vaccinations and medications, together with written advice about how to keep yourself safe while travelling.

Provision of routine (see below for non-routine vaccines) travel vaccinations such as Hepatitis A, Typhoid etc, and a self-held immunisations record so that you can keep track of your own vaccination status.

Provision of any private prescriptions that you might require in order to obtain malaria prophylaxis, or other necessary oral travel medications (e.g. altitude sickness or travellers' diarrhoea tablets), from any pharmacy.

If you are travelling to an area where you will require any of the vaccinations listed below, these will require payment in addition tothe standard service charges listed above.

Hepatitis B

Japanese Encephalitis

Meningitis ACWY

Rabies

Tick-Borne Encephalitis

Yellow Fever

This simply reflects the cost to the Practice of purchasing these vaccines on your behalf, and includes the nursing time required to administer them to you. If, for example, you are planning a trip that requires a prescription for malaria prevention, routine travel vaccines, plus Yellow Fever, the full cost to one adult for this service would be £20 + £55 (YF Vaccine) = £75.

Please click on the Travel Vaccines tab above to see our full pricelist.

How to Access our Travel Services

If you require any services relating to foreign travel, you will need to have an appointment with our Travel Nurse to discuss your travel arrangements. She will need to know which countries, and areas within those countries, that you are visiting, in order to determine which vaccinations are required. Before organising a Travel Service appointment, you must complete and return our Pre-Travel Questionnaire, which is available from Reception, or download a copy by clicking on the link below.

If you did not spend your childhood in the UK, we will have no NHS records of your previous immunisations, unless you have previously supplied them. It is therefore ESSENTIAL that you make all possible efforts to obtain a translated record of your childhood vaccinations, and include this with your Travel Questionnaire.

Please complete a separate Questionnaire for each person travelling, including any children.

Once your Pre-Travel Questionnaire has been returned and assessed by the Nurse, one of our receptionists will contact you to arrange a suitable appointment time, tailored to the exact requirements of your travel plans. Please allow at least 6 weeks before your date of travel and your first appointment, as any vaccinations that you require will take time to become effective, and we may need to order in some of the less-frequently-used vaccines. This may mean that you require a series of appointments in order to receive all the injections that you need. If you require malaria prevention (prophylaxis), the Nurse will advise you about this during your first appointment.

If your travel plans are especially complex and lengthy, if you have very complicated medical problems, or if your date of travel is between 3 and 6 weeks away, you may be directed to the Specialist Travel Clinic at the Western General Hospital, so please bear this in mind when planning your trip. If this is necessary, we will of course refund our £20 service charge in full.

If you are planning to travel in less than 3 weeks to anywhere outside of Europe, Australia or the USA, it is too late to use our service, so please make an urgent appointment with a Specialist Travel Clinic, such as that at the Western General Hospital.

Avoiding Mosquito Bites

Remember - many diseases are spread by mosquitoes. Download our leaflet to learn more about how to avoid being bitten.

Travel Vaccines

If you're travelling to an area that is relatively "standard" in terms of health, you may only need vaccination against diseases such as Hepatitis A, Typhoid, Tetanus, Diptheria, Polio and Cholera. These will all be provided, if necessary, through our standard Travel Service charge.

If, however, you are travelling to areas where you may be at risk of more exotic diseases, you may require additional vaccines, and you will be advised about these at your initial travel consultation. Our Nurse will give you written advice about exactly which vaccines are recommended, and the number of injections that you will need to be adequately protected. For medicolegal reasons, it will not be possible to offer any of these travel vaccines to patients who have not had a prior travel assessment via our standard Travel Service, or to members of the general public who are not patients of the Practice.

In the case of Yellow Fever, because the international regulations surrounding this are more complex, and the vaccine itself more risky, please click on the Yellow Fever Vaccination tab above for more information.

You can read more about the vaccinations we can provide, and the diseases they prevent, by clicking on the name of the vaccine that you are considering having, below. The number of injections required refers to someone who is having a PRIMARY course of vaccination - i.e. who has not previously been vaccinated against that disease. If you have had a primary course before, you may only need a single BOOSTER vaccination to top up your immunity. This will all be clearly shown on your personalised advice sheet however.

Tick-Borne Encephalitis - primary course of 3 injections, administered at 0, 1 and 5-12 months. 90% protection is provided after the first 2 injections, and may be adequate for those at short-term risk of infection.

Price List

Our current prices are itemised below. Please note that these prices are for ONE injection (dose) of each vaccine, and they include the clinic time with the nurse for its administration.

Most of the vaccines require more than one injection in order to give effective protection, so please bear this in mind when planning not only for the costs, but also for the fact that your vaccination course may span several weeks. A full course of 3 doses of Hepatitis B vaccination would, for example, cost £90, and take 8 weeks to complete.

Vaccine

Price Per Dose

Hepatitis B - Adult (16 yrs and over)

£30

Hepatitis B - Child

£30

Japanese Encephalitis

£90

Meningitis ACWY

£60

Rabies

£65

Tick-Borne Encephalitis - Adult (16 yrs and over)

£65

Tick-Borne Encephalitis - Child

£65

Ordering

If you would like to go ahead and have any of the above vaccinations, the Practice will first need to buy them in on your behalf. You can place your order by downloading our order form and following the instructions carefully. Please use your personalised advice sheet, issued by the Nurse, to guide your completion of the order form.

Please complete a separate order form for each person that requires vaccination, including any children.

All orders will require pre-payment, and it is important that you understand that, as licensed medicines, vaccines that have been ordered cannot be returned to the supplier for re-use or refund, once they have been dispatched to us. It will not therefore be possible to refund the cost of any vaccines, in the event that you are unwilling, or unable, to have them administered after placing your order.

Yellow Fever

The Practice is now designated as a Yellow Fever Centre by Health Protection Scotland. This means that we now offer Yellow Fever vaccination to those travelling to affected areas of the world.

Following submission of your Travel Questionnaire, our nurses will perform a comprehensive risk assessment, using the latest World Health Organisation information, and advise whether you will require vaccination in order to enter any of the countries that you are visiting. You will be required by law to produce an International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (ICVP) in order to proceed through Border Control of any country where Yellow Fever transmission is a risk.

Individuals with certain specific medical problems may be unable to receive Yellow Fever vaccine, and in this situation, we can provide a medical exemption certificate that may be accepted by the affected country in order to gain entry. This is not guaranteed, and no liability can be accepted for individual Border Control decisions.

You can read more about Yellow Fever, and the international regulations surrounding, it by clicking here.

Vaccination consists of one single dose for all age groups, and is NOT provided by the NHS. It must therefore be purchased privately, and our current fees are listed below.

If you will require Yellow Fever vaccination and/or certificates for any of the countries that you are visiting, you will be informed of this when our receptionist telephones to schedule your Travel Clinic appointment with our nurse.

If you have previously had Yellow Fever vaccination, and you have forgotten to mention this on your Travel Questionnaire, please tell the receptionist AT THIS POINT.

You will be instructed to DOWNLOAD and SIGN one Yellow Fever Vaccination Consent Form (click HERE) for EACH INDIVIDUAL (including children) who requires the vaccine.

You must then BRING your individual, SIGNED, consent form(s) to your vaccination appointment.

When you report to Reception, please state that you are here for Yellow Fever vaccination, and present your consent form(s). Your payment will be taken, and your consent form(s) stamped as your receipt (card payments accepted).

When you are called by the Nurse, you should give her your stamped consent form, as this will be kept in your medical records. No vaccination will be carried out without a signed, stamped consent form, SO PLEASE FOLLOW THE ABOVE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY.

Price List:

Vaccination, including provision of International Vaccination Certificate:

£55 per person

Provision of Medical Exemption Certificate, without Vaccination:

£40 per person

Re-issue of Lost/Damaged Certificate, without Vaccination:

£40 per person

Avoiding Mosquito Bites

Remember - the best way to avoid Yellow Fever, and many other unpleasant diseases, is to avoid being bitten in the first place. Download our leaflet to learn more about how to minimise your risk.

Contraceptive Services

The Practice provides a full range of contraceptive advice and services, including fitting of Intrauterine Devices (IUDs) and Mirena Intrauterine Systems (IUSs) (also known as 'coils'), and the Contraceptive Implant.

If you have just had a baby and want to know what your contraception options are, you can read about this here.

Further, more detailed, information about all types of contraception available can be found on the Family Planning Association website by clicking on this link.

If your preferred language is Polish, there is information available for you here.

If you are interested in using the form of contraceptive called Sayana Press, that women self-administer, by injection, every 13 weeks, please click here to learn more about it. Please watch the short videos on the Sayana Press website to first make sure that it is something that definitely appeals to you. If after learning more about this method you would like to try it out, you will first need to make an appointment with one of the GPs to ensure that it is medically appropriate for you to use it. Once you have been assessed by the doctor, you will be given your first prescription for the medicine, and you will be asked to make an appointment with one of our nurses in order to receive the necessary training that you will need to self-administer. You should collect your first dose of Sayana Press from the pharmacy and bring it with you to your training appointment. Our nurse will use this appointment to make sure that you know how to give yourself future doses at home every 13 weeks.

If you want to discuss more about having a Contraceptive Implant fitted in the Surgery, please make an appointment with either Dr Powell or Dr Russell (male). It is essential that your appointment is with one of these two doctors, as none of the other GPs is trained to fit them.

If you are interested in having a 'coil' fitted (properly known as an Intrauterine Device or System), please watch this short film, as it will give you all the information you need to know.

If you want to inquire about having an Intrauterine Device or System ('coil') fitted in the Surgery, if you have not already done so, please make a telephone appointment with Dr Powell (female). Before you speak to her, please watch the film mentioned above. If you decide to have a coil fitted, please ensure that you complete and bring along this self-assessment form to your coil-fitting appointment.

Sexual Health Advice and Screening

The Practice offers a full and confidential range of FREE testing and advice to those concerned about sexually transmitted infections, or other aspects of sexual health.

Testing for Chlamydia and Gonorrhoea is readily available through a simple, painless, self-taken vaginal swab for women, and a self-taken urine specimen for men. You do not have to be physically examined, and can take these specimens yourself in the privacy of your own home before submitting them back to the Practice.

For men who have sex with men, rectal and throat swabs for Chlamydia and Gonorrhoea are easily taken in the surgery by one of the clinical staff.

Testing for syphillis and blood-borne viruses such as HIV and Hepatitis B are easily available to anyone of any sexual orientation through a simple blood test. This should be discussed with one of the doctors first however, so that results can be interpreted in the correct context.

Men who have sex with men can protect themselves from catching Hepatitis A or B during sex by having a course of simple vaccinations against these viruses. These can be given, free of charge, here in the surgery by our nurses. If you are interested in this, please mention it to your doctor, or feel free to book an appointment with the nurse directly. Vaccination against both viruses is given using one single, combination, injection, but you will need a course of 4 of these injections over several months to give you full protection.

For those patients concerned about attending the GP for such testing or advice, alternative sexual health services can be access through Chalmers Sexual Health Centre. There is also a number of other clinics throughout the city that might be more local to you, and these can be found by clicking here.

If you would like to know more about any sexually transmitted infection, please click here.

Monitoring and Recording Your Blood Pressure at Home

For some people, coming to see the doctor or nurse can be stressful. For these people, this can mean that their blood pressure (BP) and pulse rate goes up whenever they see a healthcare professional. This is called "White-Coat Hypertension", and it makes it difficult to determine what their "true" BP really is underneath all that anxiety. For this reason, we may ask you to monitor your own BP at home, over a period of a week or so, and then give us a note of your readings so that we can work out your average home BP. This should reflect what your blood pressure is really like if you suffer from White-Coat Hypertension. This can also be very helpful if you are already on medication for your blood pressure, or you've had it increased recently, and it doesn't seem to be working properly.

If you have your own BP monitor at home, you can use this, or alternatively, we can loan you one from the Surgery for a week or two, depending on availability. If you do have your own machine, please be aware that only those that measure your BP at your arm provide a medically correct result. Those that measure BP at the wrist are not suitable for medical use. In addition, not all BP machines are of good enough quality for medical use, where the results might end up in you taking medication for the rest of your life. All of our Surgery machines meet these standards, so are reliable, but if you use your own machine, you should first check that it meets the approval of the British Hypertension Society by checking this website: Approved BP Machines

We have our own specially designed form on which to record your BP readings, and you will be given a copy by the doctor or nurse. If you lose it, or need to start again, another copy can be downloaded here: